Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 80:851–858 DOI 10.1007/s00170-015-7003-8 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Individualized production in die-based manufacturing processes using numerical optimization Roland Siegbert · Nafi Yesildag · Markus Frings · Frank Schmidt · Stefanie Elgeti · Henning Sauerland · Marek Behr · Christian Windeck · Christian Hopmann · Yann Queudeville · Uwe Vroomen · Andreas B ¨ uhrig-Polaczek Received: 30 June 2014 / Accepted: 6 March 2015 / Published online: 9 April 2015 © Springer-Verlag London 2015 Abstract Individualized production, which is a major goal of many high-wage countries, describes a production pro- cess in which all elements of a production system are designed in such a way that they enable a high level of product variety at mass production costs. This paper demon- strates recent advances in the individualized production with die-based manufacturing processes, namely high-pressure die casting and plastics profile extrusion. Within these application areas, the chosen approach aiming at individ- ualized production is based on the use of numerical die and process design. The design procedure relies on numer- ical process simulations based on a nonlinear optimization library and a spline-based geometry kernel. All components interact automatically without requiring user interaction; thus, a completely independent optimization cycle can be achieved. The numerical optimization helps to reduce— or even eliminate—the so far very characteristic manual reworking steps of an original die or process design. These reworking steps are a major cost factor when it comes to individual production. Their abolishment through the pre- sented numerical approaches therefore represents a large step towards the concept of individualized production. R. Siegbert () · M. Frings · S. Elgeti · H. Sauerland · M. Behr Chair for Computational Analysis of Technical Systems, Schinkelstr. 2, 52062 Aachen, Germany e-mail: siegbert@cats.rwth-aachen.de N. Yesildag · C. Windeck · C. Hopmann Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV), Pontstr. 49, 52056 Aachen, Germany F. Schmidt · Y. Queudeville · U. Vroomen · A. B¨ uhrig-Polaczek Foundry Institute, Intzestr. 5, 52072 Aachen, Germany Keywords Individualized production · Finite element method · Shape and process optimization · High-pressure die casting · Plastics profile extrusion 1 Introduction The industrial production in high-wage countries is exposed to enormous competition from low-wage countries. In order to maintain competitiveness and compensate disadvantages in terms of production costs, high-wage countries focus on differentiation strategies and surpass others in the quality of their products and services. However, the ongoing techno- logical developments and the steady economic growth lead to an improvement of product quality in low-wage coun- tries. That is why high-wage countries will not be able to maintain their competitive advantages by simply improving their standing in differentiation strategies. Instead, they need to work on the solution of the polylemma of production [2] and thereby combine the advantages of the different market strategies [30]. The polylemma of production hereby refers to two fun- damental dichotomies: The market-oriented dichotomy and the resource-oriented dichotomy. On the one hand, the resource-oriented dichotomy focuses on the resource tie- up in a company and describes the goal conflict between planning orientation, in which the synchronization of pro- duction resources is optimized, and value orientation, which aims at achieving the highest system dynamics. The market- oriented dichotomy on the other hand describes the conflict between manufacturing products at mass production costs (scale) and matching the production to individual customer demands (scope) [2, 31]. In particular, the conflict between scale and scope is gaining importance against the background of increasing